Network

According to T-Mobile CEO John Legere, the company is seeing a huge intake of new iPhone customers and this is before it actually officially has the phone on its network. Speaking at their 2013 Citi Global Conference in Las Vegas today, Mr Legere claimed that T-Mobile was seeing around 100,000 iPhone activations every month. He also claimed that T-Mobile serves around 1.9 million iPhones on its network.

T-Mobile recently announced the details of their plans to upgrade to LTE in 2013 thanks to a chunk of the 1900 MHz spectrum they earned through the busted-up AT&T deal. Those upgrades will also include enhancements on HSPA+, which should support the iPhone.

Google has updated their Google Voice app for the iPhone, including complete integration with Sprint to allow calls to be sent directly to the 3rd party app rather than the stock Phone app. Here's the complete update log:

Curious how to configure access to a VPN client on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad? L2TP, PPTP, and IPSec VPN support are all built right into iOS and we'll show you how to set them up after the break!

Now that we all just pretty take it for granted that the Verizon iPhone will be announced tomorrow and ship around the end of the month we can start sweating the details like -- will Verizon's network be able to handle the AT&T-crushing load and will they still offer unlimited data plans. According to "a person familiar with the matter" (probably not Steve Jobs, right?), the Wall Street Journal says the answer to both questions is "yes":

Today AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spoke with CNBC in a lengthy interview. Discussed first was the relationship AT&T has with Apple and how the iPad is doing in the business sector.

"I think this is going to be really a significant product for enterprise. You think about, you know, our objective is just to mobilize everything. Whether it's in the home or the workplace, this is a device that really lets you think differently about mobilizing all of the applications that you see in business. And we're getting a strong interest from our large business customers on bringing this device into their environments, and whether it's working with the salesforce, whether it's order takers, any number of areas, are really excited about bringing this device in."

Skipping near the end of the interview Stephenson touches on AT&T's network improvements - mainly in New York.

"The uptake and the demand was dramatic, and there are particular markets like New York. The demand was really impressive, and it had an effect on voice quality. We have been going hard at the voice quality issue in New York, and made tremendous progress. And so, we're getting to a point where voice quality is getting to where it should be, and mobile broadband is the fastest in the nation. as measured by any number of independent people."

So how about it New Yorkers, has the quality of your service increased or are you still stuck with dropped call after dropped call? Sound off in the comments below!

It's too bad nobody brought up the question about the iPhone 4launch issues that are still continuing as of right now. To be fair to AT&T though, Sprints whole system was shut down from the EVO launch for a few hours. How many EVO's were sold on launch? Now compare that to the amount of iPhone 4 pre-orders were happening today (presumably a much higher number).

AT&T still remains reluctant to introduce US iPhone customers to tethering and judging from their latest response to Engadget's inquiry, we wouldn't expect it anytime too soon.

"iPhone tethering has the potential to exponentially increase traffic, and we need to ensure that we're able to deliver excellent performance for the feature – over and above the increases in data traffic we're already seeing – before we will offer the feature."

According to emails sent from AT&T employees to MacDailyNews readers, the network is working hard to enable iPhone tethering as soon as possible. Many of our readers are still waiting patiently to see when AT&T will flip the switch on iPhone tethering and if you contact AT&T the following are the contents of the cookie cutter reply you will receive in your inbox.

AT&T has openly admitted that they have selected Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as their LTE equipment suppliers and even better is the fact they are on track for a 2011 LTE rollout. 2011 is dead on with the information we gave you almost one year ago stating that LTE would in fact be here on AT&T in 2011 with the slight chance it would be delayed until 2012.

Now don't fret when it comes to the existing 3G network that many of you have issues with. AT&T promises to keep working to improve that for you as well. They are not abandoning you... yet.